Site Omega: Aftermath
by Vathara
Summary: SG1 in the wake of Monster Wars... H.E.A.T. leaves a trail, if you know where to look. Comes before Innocent Bystander.


Author's Notes: This story is set in a variant of Gryph's "Deep Water" universe, developed by Gryph and Laura Boeff. This story comes before the "Urban Legends" and "Innocent Bystander", an epilogue to "Monster Wars". 

For those who haven't seen "Monster Wars", basic plot: telepathic aliens try to take over the world with mind-controlled mutations and spaceships, only to be stopped by H.E.A.T. For those who haven't seen "Stargate:SG-1", the military has an interstellar portal under Cheyenne Mountain, and SG-1 (led by Colonel O'Neill) is their first-contact team. Stargate belongs to Showtime, MGM, Gekko, and Double Secret; Godzilla: The Series belongs to Toho and Tristar.

****

Site Omega: Aftermath

Looking over the wreckage that had been a massive techno-organic satellite dish, Colonel Jack O'Neill let out a low whistle. "What hit _that?_"

Major Tony Hicks surveyed the site with grudging approval, armed guards ready behind him. "Someone managed to commandeer one of the alien fighters. Sir."

Nine words. More than he'd said since Jack landed. _Oh yeah,_ the colonel thought dryly. _Sir, yes, sir. Name, rank, serial number. Sir._

Too bad Daniel wasn't here. Jack cast a careful glance over the major, wishing for his archaeologist. Daniel could get the most closed-mouthed soldier talking. Unfortunately Dr. Jackson was currently laid up in the SGC infirmary under Janet's watchful eye, after a close encounter of the munching kind with a giant alien Venus flytrap.

Not that Hicks didn't have reason to fall back on the old military custom of zipped lips. Being taken over by aliens bent on enslaving the planet would rattle anybody.

Hefting a dark chunk shot through with metallic threads, Teal'c raised a thoughtful brow. "One of your soldiers was able to decipher the Hivemind's technology enough to pilot the vessel?"

A calculated shrug. "If you could fight off the mind control, you could access part of their knowledge. It was touch and go. Somebody was standing by armed in case the pilot slipped." Waving to their escorts, he led SG-1 on.

Major Sam Carter matched her CO's stride as they picked their way through the rubble. A dank green scent rose up from their footsteps, crushed vegetation already decaying in the tropical heat. "You'd think he'd have them up for commendations, sir."

"You'd think," Jack matched her low tone. He squashed an impulse to turn this whole circus around and head back toward the Army's M.A.S.H. unit. Dr. Warner could look out for himself, mind-controlling alien-human hybrids or not. "Keep an eye open, people. Something doesn't feel right."

Teal'c scanned the area as they headed toward the beach. Tattered patches of palms and shrubs were everywhere, as if tornadoes had held a dance competition. "If the Hivemind has indeed retreated, it is unlikely to have left agents behind."

"Not not-right that way, Teal'c. Not right as in...." Jack closed empty fingers, looking for words to describe that slightly off-kilter feeling.

"As in CYA, sir?" Sam's face was perfectly bland. She held up a hand to stop them for a second, videotaping metallic fragments before placing them into a padded box.

Jack snapped his fingers. "You got it."

"What is CYA, O'Neill?"

Jack checked the jungle trail; their Army escorts weren't quite in earshot. "What's a Jaffa do when he's screwed up big time?"

"Die."

"Ah... yeah," Jack nodded. Such was life with the Goa'uld in charge. "When he's trying _not_ to die? But not exactly lie, either."

"At least, not obviously," Sam added.

"Ah." Teal'c gazed toward a biplane-length swath of grey silk. Which rustled. "O'Neill?"

Jack blinked; what had looked like a long stretch of parachute over girders resolved into skin taut between bony fingers. Long fingers. Leading up to a longer arm. Leading up to a face that... ugh. "Major?"

"Nigerian bat," Hicks said laconically. "Took down a couple of the fighters with sonic blasts. Omnivorous, far as we can tell. Hasn't eaten any humans, though it's had the chance. I'm recommending we contain it here."

A bat. That bony-browed, red-eyed creature with a wingspan equal to an F-14... was a bat. _Kind've like calling Jaws a_ really big _fish,_ Jack thought.

A blue-black knobbly sphere appeared as they pushed through the brush. Sand was dented and gouged around it, irregular dents half the height of a man that led down the beach to the sea.

Sam sped ahead of them, slipping a little through the sand, the astrophysicist drawn to new technology like Sherlock Holmes to his violin. "Amazing... looks like they actually got it down in one piece." She trailed slim fingers over the hull, blue eyes bright.

"Your guys rode this down?" Jack asked Hicks. "Didn't think they could land the fighter, or what?"

"Some kind of automatic recall went off," Hicks shrugged. "Took over the helm. They came _that_ close to being stowaways on the outbound flight." He held a thumb and finger a hair's breadth apart.

"I'd've bailed, too," Jack admitted. Something was definitely off here. Something about whoever'd taken that dish down. Why was Hicks downplaying that? He ought to be showing his men off to the folks in charge, polishing up the bright spot in what had been one heck of a day for the entire planet.

__

Alien invasion. And it wasn't even our fault, the colonel thought, swatting a persistent mosquito. SG-1 had been innocently off-planet, checking out one in another long list of worlds not quite like Earth; one more planet of humans abandoned to sink or swim by the Goa'uld who'd brought their ancestors from the Tau'ri homeworld. The team hadn't had a clue anything was wrong until they stepped back through the 'Gate - and into a room full of armed Special Forces units.

Then it'd been a quick briefing with Warner in the infirmary, a rapid-fire fill-in of just what damage mind-controlled mutants and "terrorist" aircraft had done around the globe, and a tooth-rattling helicopter ride to a series of jets to get out here to Site Omega as fast as humanly possible. Jack never wanted to see another 3 AM South Pacific aircraft carrier landing again.

"Think the cover story's holding?" Hicks asked.

"Hope so." A panicked global populace was the last thing Jack wanted to see. Though he wondered just what deals had been hammered out to get the world's nations to sweep this mess under the rug.

__

Not your problem, the colonel told himself firmly, watching Sam set up her equipment under the watchful gaze of Hicks' soldiers. "Need anything, Major?"

A distracted hand waved him off. "Just Teal'c, sir."

"Ward yourself, O'Neill," the Jaffa warned, before heading Sam's way. "If you should feel another mind touch yours-"

"Beep you. Got it." With a last glance over the escape pod, Jack headed down the beach. Those deep holes in the sand weren't quite as irregular as they looked. Three long dents led out from a center point, edged on the left or right with a sickle-shaped depression. Either this pod had one weird braking system, or those dents were-

__

Footprints, the colonel realized, coming into sight of a crumpled mass of scales and metal.

A mountain of dark, putrefying gray-green. A leviathan cast ashore on the empty strand, torn and rent by teeth long as a man was tall. Metal laced flesh and bones, spreading into webs of circuitry in the gaping hole that had been the creature's chest. "Holy...."

"Godzilla," Hicks said shortly. "The first one." His hand twitched, as if it wanted to stray near his pistol. "Military had it for study at Sandy Point. Aliens took advantage of it."

Rubbing his eyes. Jack studied the ground. Beach sands were torn up worse than a monster-truck rally. A skyscraper-sized hole led down below sea level, half-full of salt water. Pieces of dune were actually melted, glassy green. _Must've been one hell of a fight_. "It didn't make those footprints."

"Second Godzilla," Hicks replied. "The one we missed." He relaxed slightly. "Seems mutations are territorial. Once the station sending their orders went down, they turned on the aliens."

So the briefing had said, impossible as that seemed. But- "Last I heard, Godzilla was in D.C." _So why'd it come here?_

Hicks grimaced. "The lizard's been mind-controlled before. He didn't like it the last time."

Plausible. But again. Jack had that twitch of not-quite-rightness; the niggling certainty that the man beside him was leaving something important out.

__

Major Anthony "Tony" Hicks, Colonel O'Neill reviewed the man's dossier in his head. Field promotion to colonel during the first Godzilla incident. Jack had missed the attack on New York, stuck in debriefing from the original trip to Abydos. The first time he'd seen Animal Palotti's footage, he'd turned the TV schedule upside down and sideways trying to figure out what movie was on.

__

Demoted back to major after the dust cleared, Jack recalled. Tough break. But after losing helicopters, tanks, an attack sub, and half the skyline of the City That Never Sleeps, the top brass had wanted someone's head on a platter. And Hicks had been the guy in charge.

Not fair, really. Most of the other officers had made out okay. The Navy admiral got off with forced retirement and a pension.

Still. Hicks had handled Godzilla - both of them. So the brass kept him on to deal with the other mutations that started coming out of the woodwork. But anybody with half a brain could see that, short of an alien invasion, Hicks' career was going nowhere.

__

Just had the invasion, Jack thought dryly, heading back toward the M.A.S.H. tent. _So why is this guy not happy?_

"...and add a few cc's of epinephrine," Warner instructed the local nurse, a strand of graying hair escaping his cap as he turned back toward his unusual patients. A solar-powered fan billowed the tent walls, but sweat still glistened on chitinous plates. Drool stained white cotton, dripping from tusk-like teeth. Patches of brown and black hair clung to malformed skulls, and three eyes gleamed listlessly from each slack face. Warner didn't take his gaze off them for a second.

Jack couldn't blame him. He wouldn't turn his back on those two either. "Any luck?"

The doc was a hair paler than usual. "Catatonic." He tossed a sheaf of computer printout into the garbage.

__

No printers in here. Frowning, Jack moved near the bin. "What was that?"

Warner waved it off. "Some paramedic's notes. Hicks didn't think they would help. Have to say I agree with him." He eyed the still forms on the cots, suppressed a shiver. "Apparently the Hivemind programmed them with alien synaptic patterns while they were in a..." He squinted, thinking. "Brain-drain device. When the invasion pulled out, the program crashed."

The colonel turned that information over. "Lights are on, but nobody's home?"

"God, I hope not." Warner swallowed dryly.

Yeah. Jack suppressed a shudder of his own. At least the Goa'uld left your body in one piece. And if you got that one-in-a-million shot to make it to Thor's Hammer, you still had a chance to get part of your life back. Didn't look like Sopler and Hoffman were going to be that lucky. "So. Anybody else get reprogrammed?"

Warner shook his head, examining the IV bag the nurse had hung. "They hadn't gotten that far yet. Too busy conquering the world." He rolled his eyes.

"Anybody who hasn't heard that one before, raise your hands," Jack grinned. "So where's the paramedic?"

Warner frowned. "How should I know? Probably seeing to Hicks' men. Some of them are still recovering from tranq grenades."

The little prickle along Jack's spine broke into a sprint. He tried to ignore it. Probably whoever had fought the control had used the tranqs on others who couldn't. "_Who's_ the paramedic?"

"I'll ask the major later." Warner looked up as the nurse returned, bearing two syringes and a rubber-capped bottle. "Ah. Thank you. If you'll excuse me, Colonel?"

Snagging the printout from the garbage. Jack headed into clear air.

Something was off here. And until he found out what, he wasn't about to let Warner or Hicks bury anything. 

Even if it did look like just a bunch of EMT scribbles.

"Paramedic," Jack muttered under his breath, stalking through the hasty camp. "If I were a tranquilized soldier, where would I be...."

Ah. That tent, where a couple guards with rifles were looking just a bit smug. "Sergeant? Any of them awake yet?"

"Sir." A swift salute from the younger man. "Up and regretting it, sir."

Still too much of a smirk lingering around that mouth. "Could have happened to any of us. Sergeant. If we'd been in the way of the troops with clear heads."

"Ah... yes, sir." The sergeant snapped back to guard.

__

Oh..kay, Jack thought, walking into the tent. A whiff of sickening sweetness hung in the air; traces of the Army's tranq gas, no doubt. _Something a little weird about that._

Half a dozen soldiers lay bruised, bloody or semiconscious on cots. Two or three others had ventured to sit upright, and now held their heads as if the world's worst hangover had taken up residence. About five were flat out cold, snoring loud enough to wake anyone who hadn't been drugged to the teeth.

"Stay still." A corporal with paramedic's insignia dabbed at a lieutenant's split lip.

"Who'd have thought the little guy could punch that hard-" The lieutenant clammed up.

"As you were." Jack nonchalantly waved his papers in the air. "I'm looking for the paramedic who wrote this?"

Corporal Amador passed the lieutenant a cold pack, took the pile for a better look. "One of your people, sir?"

Jack lifted a brow. "I don't exactly follow you, Corporal."

"Well, I didn't write this, and I know it's not Beth's - ah, Private Chekal's style." Amador flipped a page. "Frankly, sir, I don't know anybody who uses words like-" He squinted, sounding out the words. "Psychoneuroimmunological somatic mutagenesis?"

Ow. Ow. Latin. Lots of Latin. And no Danny to translate. "So I'm looking for a doctor."

Amador shrugged. "No one I know, sir."

"Thanks." Jack frowned at the bloody-lipped lieutenant. "Who hit you, anyway?"

"One of the construction crew." Lieutenant Richards took the cold pack off his lip, gingerly touched near the wound. Winced. "Didn't catch his name. Aliens ordered us to transport him and his pals to holding, we opened the truck, and they came out feet-first." He set the pack back against swollen flesh. "Funny. Guy that slim, you'd think he'd break his hand hitting you. And the lady!" An abbreviated headshake; Richards tilted his gaze toward the one guy on the cot with an IV drip. "Didn't come up to your shoulder, and Meyer's over there with enough broken bones for a football team."

"At least she didn't shoot us," one of the hungover privates groaned. A brunette, short hair damp with sweat, eyes squinched as she tried to get the tent to stop moving.

"Sorry about that, Connor." Richards managed half a sympathetic smile. "It was my grenade he grabbed, sir. Small _and_ fast."

__

Information at last. Jack kept a straight face, though he was dying to shake these guys upside down until the details fell out of their pockets. "These were the guys who shook off the control?"

"Must've been." Richards shifted his cold pack. "It's funny, sir. While they... had us... we knew what was so dangerous about these guys. I _know_ we knew. Now-" He shifted uneasily.

__

Damage control time. "My people are going to be sending in counselors," Colonel O'Neill addressed the tent. "People with high enough clearance to hear about everything that happened here, and I do mean everything." _People who've never even been_ near _MacKensie, thank god._ "I'm not going to order you to talk to them. I know the last thing you want to do is talk about it." His gaze swept them, honest as he could make it. "But talking helps. Take it from a guy who knows."

Shifty glances around the tent. Connor wet her lips. "Sir... were you...?"

"Taken over by an alien who meant to use me to destroy everything I ever cared about?" Even after it was long done and gone, those horrifying moments before the cryofreeze still raised a shudder. "Yeah. I got lucky. Somebody killed it a few minutes later." Jack scanned the room again. "Just think about it." He focused on Richards. "So what do you remember about these guys?"

"Two from the construction crew, two in civvies," Richards started.

"Three in civvies, sir," one of the more bandaged guys on the far side of the tent corrected. "They broke loose that redhead in the main control room."

"The one that was working with the major?" Richards asked. "How'd they do that?"

"I don't know, sir. One minute the aliens are saying something about their interference no longer being tolerated, the next she whirls around and brings down the ceiling on our heads."

Ouch. "You catch any names?" Jack asked casually.

"Doctor something," the private said, after a moment. "When they were ordering her to shoot, they called her a doctor."

*****

Breathing in sticky tropical air, Jack stepped out of the main lanes of traffic in the command post. Fact by fact, he went over what he'd learned from the wounded. Which wasn't much. Apparently anything they'd done or seen under the Hivemind's influence was fuzzy. But some things had stuck out.

__

Two from construction. Slender, dark brown hair, appeared to be leader. Height he wasn't sure of. Some said tall, some said short; consensus seemed to be around six-foot-one. _Short, stocky blond; snapped at the aliens about aluminum siding._ Weird. But given some of the lines SG-1 had unloaded on various Goa'uld, not too bad.

__

Three in civilian clothes. Tall, dark teen in dreadlocks. Small, black-haired woman; skilled hand-to-band. Redhead, green sweatshirt. Doctor. Broken loose from the mind control.

Jack drummed his fingers against his thigh. Only one broken loose before they took the dish down. Why?

And why did those descriptions seem vaguely familiar?

His radio buzzed. "O'Neill."

"Teal'c." Jack stepped a little farther away from the tents. "Just the guy I wanted to talk to."

"I believe you should view what was found near the power generators."

*****

Teal'c made himself unobtrusive near the buzz of activity, keeping watch over the bruised men in borrowed fatigues currently slurping coffee.

Inwardly he was amazed these people had the leisure to drink coffee. Or anything else. The System Lords had encountered the Hivemind before, to their sorrow. It was one of the few dangers that could unite the Goa'uld for any length of time. Technology near the match of their own, parasitic minds that could affect even an unshielded Goa'uld, and a ruthlessness that matched the false gods. What the Hivemind took, it meant to keep - and the Hivemind had meant to take this planet.

Only to be stopped, by the actions of creatures the Goa'uld would not have permitted to exist. An intriguing thought.

O'Neill slid through the Tau'ri security perimeter with commendable skill. "Carter didn't need you?"

"Once we had determined the most likely points of data input, the task was one suited to Major Carter's skills. I wished to scout for mobile evidence."

"Good call." O'Neill nodded at the guys in badly-fitted fatigues. "They were tied up?"

Teal'c inclined his head. "And their equipment taken, while they were still under the Hivemind's control."

"So they weren't in construction after all," the colonel murmured thoughtfully.

"It would appear not."

O'Neill scowled. "So who the hell _were_ they?"

"Those whose minds could resist the telepathic control." Teal'c scanned the group. "Such did once exist among the humans I have encountered."

O'Neill held up a halting finger; much as Daniel Jackson would, in the midst of thought. "One problem, there. One of the five started out under the aliens' control. They broke her out of it."

Teal'c paused, taken aback. One had been freed? "I have never heard of such an event."

"Never?"

"When a Jaffa or Goa'uld is taken by the Hivemind, they must be rendered unconscious," the Jaffa said bluntly. "Remaining troops must withdraw and strike from a safe distance outside the Hivemind's radius of control. Unless the Hivemind can be driven off, all of those taken are lost."

O'Neill stayed silent a moment. "This was a close one."

"Very close, O'Neill."

"As in, we almost lost the _planet_ on this one."

Teal'c inclined his head. "Yes."

O'Neill swore, long and low. "We need to know who those people are."

Teal'c lifted a brow. "Major Hicks has not informed you?"

"Not yet."

"All of his forces are here."

"Until Warner can give them a clean bill of health, yeah," O'Neill nodded. "They think they're just here to take charge of the monsters. Which they are... for now."

Teal'c considered that. Pieced together what he had been told of the Major with what he knew from decades leading Jaffa in the field. "The ones you search for are not under his command."

"Not-" O'Neill stopped. Thought. "Go on."

"Major Hicks is a competent commander. All those he was ordered to hold would be here."

O'Neill's brows drew down. "And if he was ordered to keep his people here...."

"Then those missing were not bound to his orders."

Their radios buzzed. "Sir?" Sam's voice came over the line. "I found something you really ought to see."

*****

"So... the Hivemind has black boxes?" Colonel O'Neill asked, threading his way through the maze of cables spread over the padded inside of the escape pod.

Sam nodded, brushing a blonde strand out of her face. "More or less, sir." Fingers danced over her keyboard, exulting as yet one more alien technology fell to her interface programs. Teal'c could point out what inputs went where, but it had been up to her to translate that into something Tau'ri computers could comprehend. "Listen."

The words were watery, but clearly human. _"They're running away?"_

"Buh-bye." Pure teenage gloating. _"Whoa,_ chica!"

__

"The controls are locked; I can't steer!" A panicked woman's voice. _"We're heading for outer space!"_

"Cool." An edge of fear crept into the teen's voice. _"Oh wait, not cool. _Very_ not cool!"_

Static. "Carter?" the colonel asked.

Sam shook her head. "I'm still isolating how long their data blocks are. Sometimes they seem to vary." Frustrating. She wanted to listen. Wanted to _know. _Somehow, these people had used totally alien technology, without any of the advantages the SGC had developed. How?

Static cleared; the pilot again. _"...I can't remember anything!"_

"Wait." A new voice, fiercely calm. _"When we used an escape pod to get out of the Leviathan, I pushed something that looked like-"_

Thruster fire.

Jack leaned back with a whistle. "Close one." He tapped her monitor. "Don't suppose there's any video?"

Sam frowned at her readouts. "I'm not sure yet, sir. Give me a few more hours." Mind turning the problem over, she prepared to dive back in.

The colonel held up a hand. "Let's fill in a few of the holes, first. Teal'c? You say humans _could_ resist the Hivemind. What happened to change that?"

"Some humans could, O'Neill. They, and all of their blood, were slain."

O'Neill leveled a shrewd gaze Teal'c's way. "Excuse me?"

Teal'c never flinched. "Humans who resist the Hivemind are enemies of the Goa'uld. Once they are discovered, they are executed. As are all who share their blood."

O'Neill mouthed a curse. "That's crazy."

"Actually, no, sir." Sam scribbled notes, thinking it through. "Someone who's resistant to mind control might not make a good host. Like Kendra? And if it's hereditary, you don't want it in the gene pool." She looked up. "If resistant people were going to show up anywhere in the galaxy, sir, they'd show up here."

"Okay...." The colonel rubbed his head. "You still say not military."

"The soldiers I have observed do not act in such a manner."

Sam blinked. "Not military, sir? But there aren't any civilians on the island."

"We noticed," O'Neill said dryly. "Something doesn't fit here, Carter. I'm open to suggestions."

"Well..." She walked to the hatch, pointed to the footprints in the sand. "One more for your list of things that don't fit, sir."

"Godzilla. Right."

"No, sir." Sam pointed uphill, toward techno-organic wreckage. "Sir, every other alien artifact on this island was shredded. Godzilla even tore up the crashed ships. Though we think we can piece a few things back together."

"Yet the creature did not damage the escape pod." Teal'c looked intrigued. "What prevented it?"

"The Army couldn't have stopped it. Not with the weapons they've got on hand." She headed for her laptop. "Wonder if the Pentagon's got the phone number for H.E.A.T...."

"Dr. Whoziwhatzis' team?"

"Tatopoulos." Sam nodded, pressing keys. "If Godzilla takes off, they're usually not far behind. Weird they didn't show up in D.C.-"

O'Neill waved it off, handing over a sheaf of stained pages. "What do you make of these?"

Sam flipped through the pages. "What are they supposed to be?"

"Just tell me what you think they are."

Intrigued, Sam started reading. _Anatomical changes possibly induced by psychoneuroimmunological somatic mutagenesis_, one of the pages began, and it got more interesting from there.

A throat cleared. "Carter?"

Surprised, Sam realized it'd been ten minutes. "Sir - can we get these people transferred to Cheyenne Mountain?"

The colonel leaned back against the wall. "People, plural, Major?"

"Three, maybe four." Sam turned to a page halfway through the stapled pile. "The phrasing and word choice changes with every section. Sometimes every paragraph. Some of the biological information's repeated; once with a biochemical slant, once with a behavioral bias. And there's some suppositions on the alien's computer technology stuck in on top of that. Biologists usually don't do computers." She flipped a few more pages. "It's rough. The theories don't have more than a few handfuls of preliminary evidence to back them up. But whoever pulled this together was _good._"

O'Neill took the stack. "So these are somebody's notes." A wry smile bent the comer of his lips. "Just not a paramedic's notes."

"No, sir." Hadn't she just said that? "Wish I'd had them while I was trying to decode the black box."

"They're that good."

"Sir, we've got people in the _SGC_ who aren't this good." Sam cast a longing glance at the scanned schematic of Hivemind circuitry. "Where's Major Hicks hiding them?"

"He is not," Teal'c stated.

"Not directly, anyway." The colonel ticked off points on his fingers. "We got a giant lizard leaving this pod intact, when everything else gets flattened. We got four people originally dressed in civvies, two of whom use the old strip-uniforms-off-the-bad-guys trick to sneak in. Said civvies then proceed to wreak havoc here, there, and everywhere, giving the aliens conniption fits, and somehow break some redhead doctor out of the Hivemind's control. Then the five of them blast the relay station, commandeer a fighter, dogfight a few of the aliens, blast the dish, get out of the fighter, somehow walk out under Godzilla's nose, leave us a pile of notes, and disappear." He spread empty hands. "What does all this have in common?"

__

Biologists. Godzilla. Struck by a sudden thought, Sam lunged for her cell phone. "Major?"

"Just a minute, sir." Dialing, dialing.

"You've reached H.E.A.T. Headquarters." A bright, teenage voice; a hum of computers and equipment in the background. "We're incommunicado right now; chasing tachyons over in Jersey. So leave your name and number at the beep, and if we're still alive, we'll get back to you." _Beep._

The astrophysicist blinked. Stared at the receiver.

A cocky teenage voice. A _familiar_ voice.

"Problem on the line, Carter?"

Sam wet her lips. "Sir - the invasion really started a few days ago, didn't it? In New Jersey, when the aliens took over the Sandy Point base?"

"Indeed," Teal'c agreed.

Sam turned up the volume, then hit redial. "Sir, _listen._"

*****

General Hammond scowled at their report. The morning's first cup of coffee steamed at his right, and mounds of paperwork slumped over his desk; snowy fallout from one more alien invasion. "You're saying the fate of our planet hinged on a team of renegade mutant-chasing scientists?"

"High-tech spy camera inside the Leviathan hangar," Colonel O'Neill ticked off points on his fingers. "Wreckage of one of Dr. Craven's Nigel 'bots near the Cyber-Godzilla hangar. Boat missing from the dock nearby. Same boat found on Site Omega, with Dr. Tatopoulos' and Craven's fingerprints inside. Dr. Chapman's fingerprints on a disassembled alien blaster and the force field control. The notes. The black box." He nodded toward Sam. "Not to mention these."

Major Carter set a tape recorder on the table. "We managed to pull a few more things out of their surveillance systems. There wasn't that much left, but...." She hit _play_.

__

"Destroying the power generators is the key," came Tatopoulos' determined whisper. _"No power, no tachyon beam."_

"Leaving us stranded on an island filled with voracious mutations," Craven lamented.

"From what we can piece together, Hicks caught them before they could sabotage the generator," Sam commented. "At least, that time."

Craven again. _"We can generate a radiopathic feedback to overload the dampers!"_

Something _zapped._

"Or, we could just blow it up."

Mid-sip, Hammond choked on his coffee.

"But this is the best." Fast-forwarding, Sam played the rest of the black box.

__

"Can you fly it?" Tatopoulos, low and serious.

__

"Yeah, sure!" Craven. _"Give me a week and I might find the CD player."_

A woman's voice; reluctant, but filled with quiet steel. _"I can fly it."_

"Dr. Chapman." Sam hit _pause_. "She's the only one who broke loose of the alien control before Tatopoulos brought the dish down."

__

"Monique, if those aliens take control of me-"

Grim compassion. _"I will do what is necessary."_

Hammond blinked. "Is that-?"

"The one and only Monique Dupres," Sam acknowledged. "Practically the only recording we have of her, anywhere."

"Who, by the way, fits the survivors' description of a short, black-haired woman who breaks bones like other people break matches," Jack pointed out. "Add to that a teenage punk with dreadlocks and an attitude, a short, stocky blond with a beard, a redhead, and a slim guy who doesn't look dangerous." He spread empty hands. "They might as well've left calling cards."

Hammond sipped more coffee.

__

Ut-oh, Jack thought. He pushed past the sick feeling in his stomach. "They've been fighting the Hivemind for _days_, sir. And Hicks is trying to shove this whole mess under the rug-"

Hammond sighed. "I'm aware of that, Colonel."

"Sir?" Sam ventured.

The general looked as if he'd bitten a lemon. "I don't suppose it's occurred to any of you to add up how many laws Dr. Tatopoulos' team has broken over the past week." His fingers tapped against a thick-stapled list. "Breaking into a secure base. Multiple occasions. Resisting arrest. Also multiple. Espionage. Theft of government property. Destruction of government property. Aggravated assaults on military personnel. Entering foreign territories without proper passports or authorization... I could go on."

Jack couldn't believe his ears. _Of course you can,_ the cynical part of his brain piped up. _Whenever the top brass gets involved, everything goes to hell. _"Sir. They saved the _planet_."

"Which is currently the only fact keeping a certain two-hundred-foot lizard off the military's hitlist, Colonel." Hammond folded his hands. "I know it's not right. Jack. But to anyone below our clearance level, H.E.A.T. was never even there."

"Why, sir?" Sam's voice held a note of incredulous anger.

"Because they're afraid, Major," the general said levelly. "The world threw every conventional weapon we had at Godzilla and the other mutations, and we might as well have been throwing rocks. If the Hivemind hadn't come down when they did... certain fingers were hovering over buttons we don't want pushed."

Weapons of mass destruction. Jack shivered. _Like nukes would do any good against radioactive mutations,_ he thought.

Then again, nobody'd been dumb enough to try that. Yet.

Hammond met Jack's gaze. "So far the only thing that's been able to stop a mutation was Hicks, or H.E.A.T. I don't need to tell you who the Pentagon would rather deal with."

Teal'c sat a hair straighter. "You have devised a plan to counteract this lack of foresight."

A trace of humor surfaced in Hammond's eyes. "We prefer not to call the Joint Chiefs' considered decisions _lack of foresight_, Teal'c."

"Not unless we're being polite," Jack pointed out.

"Be that as it may, Colonel...." Hammond's gaze landed on Sam. "Major. I hear the exobiology department could use some assistance."

Blue eyes crinkled in not-quite-concealed amusement. "Outside assistance, sir?"

"I'm sure you will act with the fullest possible discretion, Major."

She snapped him a nod. "Yes, sir."

"Now-" Hammond's gaze swept the three of them. "If you don't have any more pressing duties, SG-1, Dr. Frasier wanted you to take a certain difficult patient off her hands."

"Daniel, difficult, sir?" Jack held back a moment as the other two left.

"Slightly less difficult than a certain Air Force colonel, I believe she said."

Ouch.

Halfway down the hall. Jack snapped empty fingers. Right. He'd meant to get an extra copy of the Site Omega reports for Daniel. Biology and technology weren't exactly up Dr. Jackson's alley, but anyone who'd watched the evening news would want to read something with _Godzilla_ in the intro.

No big deal. He'd ask Naomi to run the reports through the copier. She'd put them on the archaeologist's desk, and Daniel could look them over before the next mission. Be a good break from piecing together pots.

Yeah, that would work just fine.


End file.
